Flickerfest began as a small local festival at the Balmain High School in 1992. In the space of 14 years it has grown to become Australia's only competitive International Short Film Festival with contacts across the globe.

Each year the festival director visits festivals around the world seeking new films of a high standard most of which have not been seen in Australia. Flickerfest is considered in International circles as the leading Australian competitive short film festival and increasingly filmmakers view it as one of the main festivals on the world circuit.

In 2003 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science elected to recognise Flickererfest as a qualifying festival for the Best Short film and Best Animation categories of the Academy Awards®

The honour of Academy Award ® accreditation will guarantee Flickerfest's international profile for many years to come, whilst also ensuring greater opportunities for our Australian short film makers internationally.

Since 1995 Flickerfest's national tour has become a very important part of the festival. The tour takes the main competitive programmes and Special sessions to many regional and metropolitan areas, which rarely have an opportunity to view this collection of the best of the world's short films. The difference between Flickerfest and other film festivals is that Flickerfest is acknowledged as a quality arts event. Each year we screen Academy Award nominated films plus many other internationally award-winning films.

Thankyou to all our sponsors, participating filmmakers and to you our audience for supporting Flickerfest 2005.

I am very pleased to welcome you to the 14th Flickerfest International Short Film Festival.

Once again 2004 has been a very exciting year for the growth of Flickerfest, both at home and internationally.

This year we received a record 980 entries across the various sections of the festival from all around the globe. This confirms Flickerfest’s growing profile amongst the global film community and recognizes that selection into our competition provides an important benchmark in a short films career.

With our record entries and the outstanding quality of so many of the films entered, selecting the final programme for this festival has been extremely difficult.

Short film is increasingly being recognised as an art form within its own right and more and more audiences are truly appreciating that short on length certainly does not mean short on entertainment value.

Each short film is a labour of love, made with a lot of sacrifice and little resources and my thanks go to all of those filmmakers who have entered the festival this year, those that have made the final selection and those that have not.

Certainly there were far more excellent films submitted than we are able to screen.

Our 2005 festival will showcase the best of these short films from Australia and the world, in a series of competitive programmes that will celebrate the art of short film in all its various forms.

This year we are very pleased to be presenting, for the first time ever in Australia, the Jameson award, a collaberation between Jameson Whisky and the European coordination of film festivals. This award will go to the best Australian short film, who will win the very generous prize of 6000 Euros.

Each year at Flickerfest we take pride in assembling the largest short film collection screened in Australia and in presenting this programme, both in Sydney and on our 15 venue national tour.

In 2005 we will screen, 16 different short film programmes over our ten day festival season. Apart from our competitions, Flickerfest further embraces global storytelling through presenting Australian audiences with a series of showcase programmes that are designed to inspire, entertain and captivate. We hope that they give you a greater insight into the lives of people all around the world, those who exist outside of Hollywood.

This year we are shining our global spotlight on Mexico famous for its rich history and cultural diversity but also for its substantial contribution to the history of cinema.

Over the past 8 years as director of Flickerfest I have had the great pleasure of sharing with audiences across Australia a wealth of Mexican shorts that have inspired, captivated and remained in people’s memories.

I am very pleased to now have the opportunity in partnership with the Mexican film institute (IMCINE) to bring the best of these shorts back to Australia and celebrate them in a programme that I am sure will once again capture the imagination.

Shorts featured have been celebrated at festivals around the world and feature internationally renowned Mexican stars such as Salma Hayek, unrecognizable as a crazed nun in the short 'Sweet Releases' and a very young Gael Garcia Bernal pre his 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' acclaim in "Guts and Heart".

Flickerfest 2005 will also proudly present a selection of the most innovative music clips in recent years from legendary UK Electronic label Warp Records. This program was curated by Warp London exclusively for Flickerfest and includes a series of new clips not previously screened in Australia. Our Flickerfest 2005 Warp Vision Music Clip programme is essential viewing for all music clip fans as well as all fans of film, art or design.

This year I also dare you to be spooked as we present a programme of ghoulish horror shorts guaranteed to send shivers down your spine. Made up of films from all around the world, all who have won awards for this genre, this not to be missed programme promises to be screaming fun.

In 2005 Flickerfest presents for the first time ever in Australia the very best of animated shorts from Annecy, the international film festival dedicated entirely to animation. The festival was established forty years ago in the small French town of Annecy and has become the biggest and most respected animation festival in the world.

The Flickerfest program of shorts is curated from the past seven years of Annecy’s award-winning films in collaboration with the organisers of the festival, Centre International Cinema D’ Animation and shows the great imagination and cultural diversity of the countries represented.

In 2005 Flickerfest will also take a trip down memory lane with a programme made up of past Flickerfest award winners from Australia and the world.

Over the years Flickerfest has supported the careers of many of Australia's leading filmmakers including Cate Shortland 'Somersault' (Winner Best Director for her short film 'Flower Girl' in 2000), Evan Clarry 'Blurred', and ‘Under the Radar' (Winner Best Australian Short film 1998 'Mate'). We look forward to screening these shorts alongside some of their international counterparts in our Hall of Fame programme this festival.

Short film plays a crucial role in encouraging and promoting cultural diversity in its role as an independent storytelling medium.

We hope that our programmes at Flickerfest encourage people to engage with this diversity and in some small way contribute to the awareness and cultural tolerance, so desperately needed in our current times.

Now in our fourteenth year, Flickerfest relies heavily on the support of our major sponsors without whom a festival of this nature would not be possible. To our government partners the Australian Film Commission, and major sponsors the FTO, National Geographic Channel, SBS, Fujifilm and Telstra Bigpond Movies I would like to extend my gratitude for helping us to present a world class film event of this nature.

My gratitude also extends to all our other sponsors who are acknowledged in this programme. Your support enables us to continue in our vision of bringing the best of the worlds and Australia’s short films together each year on the same screen, in a celebration of cinema at its finest

And last but not least a huge thanks to my fantastic Flickerfest Manager Helen Maidens who works tirelessly and passionately all year and festival coordinator Anna Mullins without whom the festival would not be possible.

I would also like to thank all of the members of the Flickerfest selection committee who trawled through almost 1000 entries this year to assist me in putting together the final films screening in competition. Their names are all listed in the festival programme

I look forward to seeing you under the stars in January at our stunning location of Bondi Beach, where we will have the pleasure of watching some new stars of the cinema being born.

Bronwyn Kidd
Festival director